The Bluestem Network Action Alert as of August 8, 1999, is as follows:

Please call U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald and ask them both to cosponsor Senator Frank Lautenberg's of New Jersey Endangered Species Recovery Act.

The Endangered Species Recovery Act is the companion bill to U.S. Representative

George Miller's bill, which currently has 82 cosponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives. This legislation would reauthorize the ESA and close many of the negative loopholes in the current act. Senator Dick Durbin has been supportive of these issues in the past, but it is time for him to take a leadership role. Furthermore, it is time for Senator Peter Fitzgerald to hear from Illinois constituents that this legislation is important to the residents of Illinois. Please call both U.S Senator Dick Durbin and U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald ask both senatos to become cosponsors of Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey Endangered Species Recovery Act.

You can place a call to U.S. Senator Dick Durbin in Washington at 202-224-2152 or in Chicago at 312-353-4952. You can place a call to U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald in Washington at 202-224-2854 or in Chicago at 312-886-3506.

This ends the Bluestem Network Action Alert.

What follows is the detailed explanation for the August 8, 1999 Bluestem Network

Action Alert.

Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey is currently looking for co-signers in the U.S. Senate to sign onto his drafted legislation. He has stated that as soon as he has 20 cosigners in the U.S. Senate he will introduce the Endangered Species Recovery Act as a bill in the U.S. Senate. Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey bill is a companion bill, or identical bill, to U.S. Representative George Miller's bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. Hopefully, one or both of these bills will be eventually passed by both houses of Congress.

The Endangered Species Recovery Act is commonly known as ESRA.

What would ESRA do?

ESRA would help to recover and delist species with the following four provisions

in its legislation.

1. FOCUSING ON RECOVERY, NOT JUST SURVIVAL.

ESRA improves the existing ESA by clarifying approval standards. Under the existing law, pesticide application, river damming, forest clearcutting, and other habitat destruction are judged by their impact on the SURVIVAL of imperiled wildlife. ESRA requires that taxpayer-funded activities must not reduce the likelihood of RECOVERY. In addition, ESRA improves the chances for recovery by identifying specific management actions and biological criteria in recovery plans, placing deadlines on final recovery plans, and encouraging federal agencies to take preventative measures before a species becomes endangered.

2. USING THE BEST AVAILABLE SCIENCE TO PLAN FOR RECOVERY.

ESRA strengthens the existing ESA by relying on the best scientific information

available. ESRA implements recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences on improving the scientific basis of important endangered species decisions. For unprotected species that means providing protection before population numbers are too low to recover. For listed species that means using independent scientists to peer review large-scale, multi-species habitat conservation plans. It also means asking biologists, not politicians, to tell us what it will take to recover and eventually delist an imperiled species.

3. REQUIRING FEDERAL AGENCIES TO ACT RESPONSIBLY.

ESRA improves the existing ESA by strengthening the checks and balances on taxpayer-funded agencies. While federal actions already undergo review to ensure minimal impacts on endangered species, federal agencies should also make efforts to further recovery or consider the cumulative impacts of their actions. ESRA requires federal agencies to help plan for species recovery and then implement those plans within their jurisdictions. ESRA also requires agencies to consider the impacts of their actions on imperiled species in other nations.

4. INCREASING CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN COMMUNITY PLANNING.

ESRA would improve the ESA by expanding opportunities for public participation in managing their communities. By requiring public notification when a federal activity may impact wildlife in their neighborhoods, ESRA would improve the public's right to know. ESRA would also require balanced public participation in large-scale regional habitat planning, as well as allow citizen enforcement when their local plans do not function as planned.

ESRA would help LANDOWNERS with the following four provisions in its legislation:

1. PROVIDING TAX INCENTIVES FOR GOOD STEWARDSHIP.

ESRA incorporates tax proposals endorsed by both property-rights and conservation organizations. Estate tax deferrals for lands enrolled in the "Endangered Species Conservation Agreements" (ESCA) would encourage large private landholdings to stay intact. By entering into an "ESCA", landowners would agree to implement proactive conservation measures (such as prescribed burning or tree planting) not already required by law. ESRA would also allow tax credits for the costs of implementing these proactive measures. In addition, the bill authorizes additional tax deductions for certain state and local property taxes on habitat managed under an ESCA.

2. GIVING PLANNING ASSURANCES WITHOUT IGNORING SCIENCE.

ESRA significantly revises the Administration's current "No Surprises" policy, which allows private landowners to alter or destroy endangered species habitat under a long-term unmodifiable permit. ESRA ensures that the initial permit is as good as it can be up front and that the developer files a performance bond to cover the costs of all reasonably foreseeable circumstances (such as wildfires, plant diseases, and other natural events that can have devastating impacts on weakened populations of wildlife). Then ESRA sets up a Habitat Conservation Plan Trust Fund to cover all other unforeseeable costs -- a safety net for landowners and species -- while allowing changes to the permit when needed to protect species.

3. ENCOURAGING REGIONAL PLANNING FOR HABITAT PROTECTION.

ESRA encourages ecosystem planning on a regional basis. Ecosystems do not run along political boundaries, so multi-species, multi-landowner plans are essential to ensure recovery. ESRA encourages regional governments to cooperate together, allows groups of private landowners to pool resources, and allows local governments to administer habitat plans.

4. HELPING LANDOWNERS WITH STREAMLINING & ASSISTANCE.

ESRA helps small landowners by streamlining the permit process and establishing

an Office of Technical Assistance. ESRA also allows the small landowners that have a minimal impact on endangered species to benefit from a quick and easy permit process and to receive planning assurances.

This concludes the detailed explanation for the August 8, 1999 Bluestem Network Action Alert.